Tabloid journalism is generally considered to be synonymous with bad journalism. This assessment of tabloid journalism is not very productive from a social scientific point of view. The argument of this article is that the journalistic other of tabloid journalism has appeared throughout the history of journalism, and that elements and aspects of journalism defined as “bad” in its own time in many cases served the public good as well as, if not better than, journalism considered to be more respectable. Tabloid journalism achieves this by positioning itself, in different ways, as an alternative to the issues, forms and audiences of the journalistic mainstream—as an alternative public sphere. By tracking the development of tabloid journalism through history, we want to contribute to the reassessment and revision of the normative standards commonly used to assess journalism that is currently taking place within the field of journalism studies. We do this by first examining what is meant by an alternative public sphere and how it can be conceptualised, then by relating this to the historical development of tabloid journalism. The historical examples are used as a basis for reviewing and revising a key dimension of current criticisms of tabloid journalism.
Chapter One: Regarding Journalism: Inquiry and the Academy Chapter Two: Defining Journalism Chapter Three: Sociology and Journalism Chapter Four: History and Journalism Chapter Five: Language Studies and Journalism Chapter Six: Political Science and Journalism Chapter Seven: Cultural Analysis and Journalism Chapter Eight: Taking Journalism Seriously Annotated Bibliography
Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is ushering in an era of potential transformation of journalism and media content. This essay considers one notable generative AI platform called ChatGPT made available to the public in 2022 for free use. ChatGPT allows users to enter text prompts and rapidly generates text responses drawn from its knowledge acquired via machine learning in engagement with the internet. This essay is coauthored by a human journalism and media professor in collaboration with ChatGPT. The essay demonstrates the capacity and limitations of ChatGPT and offers reflections on the implications of generative AI for journalism and media education.
The internet - specifically its graphic interface, the world wide web - has had a major impact on all levels of (information) societies throughout the world. Specifically for journalism as it is practiced online, we can now identify the effect that this has had on the profession and its culture(s). This article defines four particular types of online journalism and discusses them in terms of key characteristics of online publishing - hypertextuality, interactivity, multimediality - and considers the current and potential impacts that these online journalisms can have on the ways in which one can define journalism as it functions in elective democracies worldwide. It is argued that the application of particular online characteristics not only has consequences for the type of journalism produced on the web, but that these characteristics and online journalisms indeed connect to broader and more profound changes and redefinitions of professional journalism and its (news) culture as a whole.
Reciprocity, a defining feature of social life, has long been considered a key component in the formation and perpetuation of vibrant communities. In recent years, scholars have applied the concept to understanding the social dynamics of online communities and social media. Yet, the function of and potential for reciprocity in (digital) journalism has yet to be examined. Drawing on a structural theory of reciprocity, this essay introduces the idea of reciprocal journalism: a way of imagining how journalists might develop more mutually beneficial relationships with audiences across three forms of exchange—direct, indirect, and sustained types of reciprocity. The perspective of reciprocal journalism highlights the shortcomings of most contemporary approaches to audience engagement and participatory journalism. It situates journalists as community-builders who, particularly in online spaces, might more readily catalyze patterns of reciprocal exchange—directly with readers, indirectly among community members, and repeatedly over time—that, in turn, may contribute to the development of greater trust, connectedness, and social capital. For scholars, reciprocal journalism provides a new analytical framework for evaluating the journalist–audience relationship, suggesting a set of diagnostic questions for studying the exchange of benefits as journalists and audiences increasingly engage one another in networked environments. We introduce this concept in the context of community journalism but also discuss its relevance for journalism broadly.
The history of journalism in elective democracies around the world has been described as the emergence of a professional identity of journalists with claims to an exclusive role and status in society, based on and at times fiercely defended by their occupational ideology. Although the conceptualization of journalism as a professional ideology can be traced throughout the literature on journalism studies, scholars tend to take the building blocks of such an ideology more or less for granted. In this article the ideal-typical values of journalism’s ideology are operationalized and investigated in terms of how these values are challenged or changed in the context of current cultural and technological developments. It is argued that multiculturalism and multimedia are similar and poignant examples of such developments. If the professional identity of journalists can be seen as kept together by the social cement of an occupational ideology of journalism, the analysis in this article shows how journalism in the self-perceptions of journalists has come to mean much more than its modernist bias of telling people what they need to know.
Alternative Journalism is the first book to investigate and analyse the diverse forms and genres of journalism that have arisen as challenges to mainstream news coverage. From the radical content of emancipatory media to the dizzying range of citizen journalist blogs and fanzine subcultures, this book charts the historical and cultural practices of this diverse and globalized phenomenon. This exploration goes to the heart of journalism itself, prompting a critical inquiry into the epistemology of news, the professional norms of objectivity, the elite basis of journalism and the hierarchical commerce of news production. In investigating the challenges to media power presented by alternative journalism, this book addresses not just the issues of politics and empowerment but also that of the journalism of popular culture and the everyday. The result is essential reading for students of journalism - both mainstream and alternative.
Journalism has enjoyed a rich and relatively stable history of professionalization. Scholars coming from a variety of disciplines have theorized this history, forming a consistent body of knowledge codified in national and international handbooks and canonical readers. However, recent work and analysis suggest that the supposed core of journalism and the assumed consistency of the inner workings of news organizations are problematic starting points for journalism studies. In this article, we challenge the consensual (self-)presentation of journalism – in terms of its occupational ideology, its professional culture, and its sedimentation in routines and organizational structures (cf. the newsroom) in the context of its reconfiguration as a post-industrial, entrepreneurial, and atypical way of working and of being at work. We outline a way beyond individualist or institutional approaches to do justice to the current complex transformation of the profession. We propose a framework to bring together these approaches in a dialectic attempt to move through and beyond journalism as it has traditionally been conceptualized and practiced, allowing for a broader definition and understanding of the myriad of practices that make up journalism.
Abstract The literature discussing the impact of media and journalism upon democracy, typically criticizes both media and journalism for their content and their negative effects on some aspects of democracy. In turn, this raises the question of identifying news standards by which the quality of news journalism might be evaluated. But neither the proposed news standards nor the criticism levelled against them specify with sufficient clarity the model of democracy to be used as a normative departure. This article argues that the question of proper news standards cannot be addressed in isolation from the question of different normative models of democracy. In order to discover news standards by which the quality of news journalism can or should be evaluated, it analyzes four normative models of democracy and their demands upon citizens: procedural democracy, competetive democracy, participatory democracy and deliberative democracy. Building upon that analysis, the article asks: What normative implications for media and news journalism follow from the distinctive perspectives of procedural, competitive, participatory and deliberative democracy? Keywords: JournalismDemocracyNormative ModelsNews Standards This article was largely written while the author was a guest scholar at the University of Florida during the Fall of 2004 funded by The Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education (STINT). The author would like to thank STINT for the funding and Professor Lynda Lee Kaid for providing such a stimulating research environment.
This article aims to contribute to a critical research agenda for investigating the democratic implications of citizen journalism and social news. The article calls for a broad conception of ‘citizen journalism’ which is (1) not an exclusively online phenomenon, (2) not confined to explicitly ‘alternative’ news sources, and (3) includes ‘metajournalism’ as well as the practices of journalism itself. A case is made for seeing democratic implications not simply in the horizontal or ‘peer-to-peer’ public sphere of citizen journalism networks, but also in the possibility of a more ‘reflexive’ culture of news consumption through citizen participation. The article calls for a research agenda that investigates new forms of gatekeeping and agenda-setting power within social news and citizen journalism networks and, drawing on the example of three sites, highlights the importance of both formal and informal status differentials and of the software ‘code’ structuring these new modes of news production.
If American journalism were a religion, as it has been called, then its supreme deity would be objectivity. The high priests of the profession worship the concept, while the iconoclasts of advocacy journalism, new journalism, and cyberjournalism consider objectivity a golden calf. Meanwhile, a groundswell of tabloids and talk shows and the increasing infringement of market concerns make a renewed discussion of the validity, possibility, and aim of objectivity a crucial pursuit. Despite its position as the orbital sun of journalistic ethics, objectivity-until now-has had no historian. David T. Z. Mindich reaches back to the nineteenth century to recover the lost history and meaning of this central tenet of American journalism. His book draws on high profile cases, showing the degree to which journalism and its evolving commitment to objectivity altered-and in some cases limited-the public's understanding of events and issues. Mindich devotes each chapter to a particular component of this ethic-detachment, nonpartisanship, the inverted pyramid style, facticity, and balance. Through this combination of history and cultural criticism, Mindich provides a profound meditation on the structure, promise, and limits of objectivity in the age of cybermedia.
Introduction: Investigative Reporting and Watchdog Journalism I. The Mainstreaming of Watchdog Journalism 1. The Dogs That Didn't Bark 2. The Barks 3. Why Watchdogs Bark II. The Social Organization and Culture of Newsmaking 4. The Politics of Sources 5. Parallel Ideals: Facticity and Objectivity in ExposCs 6. Professional Crusaders: The Politics of Professional Journalism III. Watchdog Journalism and the Quality of Democracy 7. Can Watchdog Journalism Tell the Truth? 8. Watchdog Journalism and Democratic Accountability Conclusion
Notes on Authors. Acknowledgements. Authors' Note. Chapter 1: Introduction: Sharing the Road. Part I: The Impact of Participatory Journalism. Chapter 2: Mechanisms of Participation: How audience options shape the conversation (Alfred Hermida). Chapter 3: The Journalist s Relationship with Users: New dimensions to conventional roles (Ari Heinonen). Part II: Managing Change. Chapter 4: Inside the Newsroom: Journalists' motivations and organizational structures (Steve Paulussen). Chapter 5: Managing Audience Participation: Practices, workfl ows and strategies (David Domingo). Chapter 6: User Comments: The transformation of participatory space (Zvi Reich). Part III: Issues and Implications. Chapter 7: Taking Responsibility: Legal and ethical issues in participatory journalism (Jane B. Singer). Chapter 8: Participatory Journalism in the Marketplace: Economic motivations behind the practices (Marina Vujnovic). Chapter 9: Understanding a New Phenomenon: The signifi cance of participatory journalism (Thorsten Quandt). Chapter 10: Fluid Spaces, Fluid Journalism: The role of the active recipient in participatory journalism (Alfred Hermida). Appendix: About Our Study. Glossary. References. Index.
Journalism researchers have tended to study journalistic roles from within a Western framework oriented toward the media’s contribution to democracy and citizenship. In so doing, journalism scholarship often failed to account for the realities in non-democratic and non-Western contexts, as well as for forms of journalism beyond political news. Based on the framework of discursive institutionalism, we conceptualize journalistic roles as discursive constructions of journalism’s identity and place in society. These roles have sedimented in journalism’s institutional norms and practices and are subject to discursive (re)creation, (re)interpretation, appropriation, and contestation. We argue that journalists exercise important roles in two domains: political life and everyday life. For the domain of political life, we identify 18 roles addressing six essential needs of political life: informational-instructive, analytical-deliberative, critical-monitorial, advocative-radical, developmental-educative, and collaborative-facilitative. In the domain of everyday life, journalists carry out roles that map onto three areas: consumption, identity, and emotion.
Abstract This article proposes that changing technology influences journalism in at least four broad areas: (1) how journalists do their work; (2) the content of news; (3) the structure or organization of the newsroom; and (4) the relationships between or among news organizations, journalists and their many publics. Although new media such as the Internet, World Wide Web and digital video are perhaps the most visible examples of technologies that are transforming journalism, the history of journalism is in many ways defined by technological change. The article concludes with a proposed research agenda for the study of journalism and technological change. Keywords: Digital Internet Journalism Online Technology
Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. See http://www.foundation.reuters.com/foundation-news/detail.dot?id=08188d25-20e8-4cff-b684-ed67406f3f79. The first grant was of 1.75 million over five years with the new grant announced in June of 1.25 million over three years, equivalent to a 200,000 or 19 per cent increase over the new funding period compared to the previous one. Core funding covers the bulk of the core costs of RISJ with additional income from externally funded fellowships and externally funded RISJ research and publishing activity. Such additional income has added an average of a further 70 per cent to the core Thomson Reuters funding in RISJ's first few years. 2. See http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk for membership of the RISJ Steering Committee and Advisory Board together with the RISJ Constitution, past Annual Reports and all publications. 3. See notably Lloyd (2004 Lloyd John 2004 What the Media Are Doing to Our Politics London : Constable . [Google Scholar]). 4. Jan Zielonka is also a member of the RISJ Steering Committee. See http://mde.politics.ox.ac.uk for a description of this project. 5. David Levy became Director of the Institute in September 2008 having spent much of the past two decades working for the BBC, first as a producer, reporter and programme editor on radio and TV for 10 years and then as Controller Public Policy where he was in charge of policy in the United Kingdom and Europe, latterly leading the policy dimensions of the 2006 Charter Renewal and Licence Fee negotiations. He is the author of a study of the interaction between EU and national broadcasting regulation (Levy, 2001 Levy David A. L. 2001 Europe's Digital Revolution: broadcasting regulation, the EU and the nation-state , 2nd edn , London : Routledge . [Google Scholar]) and joint editor of a book on public service plurality (Gardam and Levy, 2008). For full biographies of all RISJ staff see http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/about/institute-staff.html. 6. Robert Picard has been a Visiting Fellow at RISJ since 2009 and was previously Director of the Media Management and Transformation Centre at the University of Jnkping, Sweden. 7. Dr Anne Geniets, Dr Rasmus Kleis Nielsen and Abiye Megenta, working on projects on International Broadcasting, the Changing Business of Journalism, and Social Media in Africa, respectively. 8. See the RISJ website for a list of journalist fellows and for copies of the completed research papers. 9. See http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/about/news/item/article/reuters-memorial-lecture-2008.html. 10. See http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/events/archive/past-conferences-and-lectures/reuters-memorial-lecture-2009-carlo-de-benedetti.html. 11. See http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/events/archive/past-conferences-and-lectures/the-reconstruction-of-american-journalism.html. 12. We were co-organisers with the OII and the Berkman Center at Harvard University of a conference on the Internet and Democracy in March 2009 and an event with Professor Joseph Turow of the Annenberg School of Communications on Journalism & Clickmetrics, in June 2009. 13. See http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/events/archive/past-conferences-and-lectures/public-service-broadcasting-in-britain-and-france-compared.html and http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/events/archive/past-conferences-and-lectures/facing-the-challenge-of-the-internet-policy-and-press-responses-in-britain-and-france.html. 14. See http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/publications/risj.html. 15. See, for example, the first two Working Papers published in early 2009, by Henrik rnebring presenting some of the research framework directed for the Axess Comparative European Journalism project (see below). 16. See http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/about/news/item/article/facebook-and-twitter-the-real-winn.html. 17. For a description of the project see http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/research/featured-projects/the-axess-programme-on-european-journalism.html. Full results of the project will be published in 2011; selected results have already been published at the 2010 ICA and IAMCR conferences. 18. This project is funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, BBC Global News and France 24. For a full project description see http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/research/featured-projects/internationalnewsprovision-trust-consumption.html. 19. Dr D. E. Butler is the founder of electoral studies in Britain, the author of books on every British General Election from 1951 to 2005 as well as successive editions of British Political Facts. For many years he was also a key feature of BBC coverage of UK elections where he was best known for introducing the Swingometer to the TV coverage which translated the swing in popular votes to the number of seats in Parliament. He also chaired a weekly seminar on Media and Politics jointly with RISJ for the past decade.
The second volume of Citizen Journalism: Global Perspectives seeks to build upon the agenda set in motion by the first volume, namely by: offering an overview of key developments in citizen journalism since 2008, including the use of social media in crisis reporting; providing a new set of case studies highlighting important instances of citizen reporting of crisis events in a complementary range of national contexts; introducing new ideas, concepts and frameworks for the study of citizen journalism; and evaluating current academic and journalistic debates regarding the growing significance of citizen journalism for globalising news cultures. This book expands on the first volume by offering new investigations of citizen journalism in the United States, United Kingdom, China, India and Iran, as well as offering fresh perspectives from national contexts around the globe, including Algeria, Columbia, Egypt, Haiti, Indonesia and West Papua, Italy, Japan, Lebanon, Myanmar/Burma, New Zealand, Norway, Puerto Rico, Russia, Singapore, Syria and Zimbabwe.
With software automatically producing texts in natural language from structured data, the evolution of natural language generation (NLG) is changing traditional news production. The paper first addresses the question whether NLG is able to perform the functions of professional journalism on a technical level. A technological potential analysis therefore uncovers the technological limitations and possibilities of NLG, accompanied by an institutional classification following Weischenberg, Malik, and Scholl. Overall, NLG is explained within the framework of algorithmic selection and along its technological functionality. The second part of the paper focuses on the economic potential of NLG in journalism as well as indicating its institutionalization on an organizational level. Thirteen semi-structured interviews with representatives of the most relevant service providers detail the current market situation. Following Heuss, the development of the NLG market is classified into phases. In summary, although the market for NLG in journalism is still at an early stage of market expansion, with only a few providers and journalistic products available, NLG is able to perform tasks of professional journalism at a technical level. The analysis therefore sets the basis to analyze upcoming challenges for journalism research at the intersection of technology and big data.
Journalism education is seen as improving the quality of journalism by improving the quality of journalists. It is perceived as the “one way in which society can intervene to infl uence the development of journalism” (Curran, 2005, p. xiv). In other words, the kind of education future journalists receive matters because journalists matter among the many factors that make up journalism.
This article argues that journalism is an Anglo-American invention. The argument is developed comparing the evolution of French and Anglo-American journalism between the 1830s and the 1920s. It is claimed that American and British journalists invented the modern conception of news, that Anglo-American newspapers contained more news and information than any contemporary French paper and that they had much better organized news-gathering services. Proper journalistic discursive practices, such as reporting and interviewing, were also invented and developed by American journalists. French journalists, like journalists in many other countries, progressively imported and adapted the methods of Anglo-American journalism. This article also attempts to spell out the cultural, political, economic, linguistic and international factors which favoured the emergence of journalism in England and the United States. Journalism could develop more rapidly in these two countries because of the independence of the press from the literary field, parliamentary bipartism, the ability of newspapers to derive substantial revenues from sales and advertising, the dynamics of the English language and because of the Anglo-Saxon central and dominant position in the world.